It could have been that she was pretty once. Now her face was sunken, her head hairless. Her arm was hung in a cast, and she looked terribly frail.

“You’re the ritual magician?” she asked. “But you look so…”

“So young? Twenty. And that’s ‘apprentice ritual magician’ to you. Technically I’m not even allowed to do consultations on my own. And yet here we are.”

“I asked a friend for the best ritualist in Greater Colorado who was, you know…”

“Unencumbered by ethics? Well, like I said, here we are.”

“Yes, that.” The young lady wrinkled her nostrils. Typical stuck-up rich girl, he thought to himself, wanting his decidedly black-market services but still holding him in contempt for providing them. “What’s your name?”

“Lola Rivers.”

It sounded fake, but he didn’t care. Anyone who gave their real name in a business like this was either a fool, or else so arrogant as to defy belief.

“And I’m Dylan Alvarez. Nice to meet you, Ms. Rivers. What can I do for you?”

Not that he didn’t know. Head as smooth as an apple, frame that looked like she could stand to gain forty pounds or so, desperate look in her eyes. And here she was, seeking illicit magical help. Cancer, that was what it was. He could see it from a mile away.

“I want you to teach me to summon demons.”

Well, that was unexpected. He always liked a change of pace.

“Which demon, exactly, are we talking about?”

“Thamiel. The Lord of Demons.”

“Hoo boy, lady, you go all the way to the top. Or bottom, as the case may be. Look, I’m as unencumbered by ethics as the next guy, but I gotta ask you – you sure you want to do that?”

“Yes.”

She looked familiar. Alvarez squinted. If she had a little more flesh on her bones, a bit more hair, then…he still wouldn’t be able to place her. Damn.

“I understand a summoning doesn’t really bring him here, right? Not in a way where he could destroy anything later, or infiltrate the city?”

“That’s mostly true.” He took a copy of the Greater Key Of Solomon off his shelf. Then a few other grimoires. The Goetia. The Sacred Magic of Abramelin The Mage. The Antichrist’s Cookbook. None were relevant to the issue at hand, but he was a ritualist; he played to an audience. Opening a grimoire was a way of saying hey, I’m serious about this demonology thing.

“Demons of that caliber are in Yetzirah or Briah already; for all we know Thamiel projects into Atziluth. Hell, they say he’s a facet of God. When you’re at that level, space is just a big game. They’ll play by the rules, but a summoning changes those rules a little. You get an aspect. You could think of it as a shade. It’s not like Thamiel starts off in Siberia or Hell and then you summon him and he’s in Colorado. You allow the parts of him that are everywhere to take on a little more shape.”

“And how dangerous is that?”

“The good news is that technically he has no power except that which you give him. The bad news is that there’s a crack in everything. Just like there’s no unpickable lock, there’s no flawless soul. If you’re escalating all the way up to Thamiel himself, there will be holes in you big enough to let him in, and from there he’ll do what he wants.”

“But other people, bystanders, they’ll be safe?”

“God no. They’ll be safe from Thamiel. They won’t be safe from you when he’s done with you.”

She didn’t smile. The two word phrase he would have used was “steely resolve”. Someone who seemed like she always knew what she was doing. And yet someone thinking about summoning Thamiel. Very curious.

“Can you give me a ritual that will work?”

“Lady, I can give you twenty. The bottleneck to summoning Thamiel isn’t that it’s difficult, it’s that you would have to be a freaking moron to try.”

He watched for a reaction. She didn’t give him one.

“Look, Ms. Rivers, I’m not blind. You’ve got cancer. People with cancer do some desperate things. So go see the quack who says he can cure you with mushrooms and dried beetle legs. Drink a homeopathic solution or two. But don’t summon Thamiel.”

“Again, I appreciate your candor.”

“You’ve already paid me. I get the same amount either way.”

“Send me the ritual by Monday. I’ll give you a PO box you can use. In fact, if there are twenty, send me extras, in case the first doesn’t work. I can pay you more.”

“I’ll send you the paperwork. But Ms. Rivers. I’m serious. Don’t do this. Your health, your life, whatever it is you want from him – it’s not worth it.”

“I think it will be,” said Ms. Rivers. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Alvarez.”

Before he could respond, the lady was gone.

“Well, that was the least boring thing to happen to me today,” said Dylan, and he started copying summoning rituals.

141 Responses to Chapter 60: O Rose, Thou Art Sick

Chapter 56 was 1 August 1999. Could it be that the lady is a disguised Robin?
Some further speculation (not original) – could present-day Dylan be the aspect of Thamiel summoned by the ritual? It was suggested many times, now we may be looking at the way it happened. It certainly seems like this Dylan is not the same as Dylan-2017.

This was also back when Dylan was working off the respectable aura of ritual magic, rather than the irreverent aura of placebomancy. I’m willing to chalk all the differences in his character that we could see in this short passage up to that.

I’d say 0-4 (probably 0). Going by basic hebrew letters we’d get 0. If Scott decides to add special letters (ףךםץ) we can get up to four more. If he goes for 22 total interludes (not including the prologue) we have one left.

As before, I continue to predict the Jester is the Minstrell. The comment “A Minstrell is a Singer in a courtly context” is clever, and quite possibly intended, but you don’t name your character that for a pun that small.

If we don’t think this is Robin, then we’re predicting that the small, boyish woman in a cast, famous enough that Dylan would recognize her in 1999, prophesied as the Jester, in Colorado, trying to infect a soul with evil, is a completely different person from the Queen of Royal Colorado, trying to send her husband to hell, named Minstrell. Even in a story where names don’t usually mean things, where coincidences can just be coincidences, that would beggar belief.

Yes, that’s a possibility. But when he tells everyone he deals with he’s Dylan (he enrolled in the Magician’s academy under that name, after all), then for all intents and purposes, it’s his “real name” now. Unless he is protecting his family by hiding his surname or something like that. Which is actually pretty likely.

I think the lady is Robin, SHE becomes TOK after the summoning and that is part of her utility-macizing plan to destroy Hell: that would tie “the fall of a bird” with “bystanders won’t be safe from you” and her assurance that it would all be worthy regardless of the price

Minstrell is similar to jester, but the jester should be able to sing to the king and queen. That’s hard to do if you’re the queen. What if Lola is just a disgruntled employee of the West kings (a dancer and singer with osteolytic lesions from multiple mieloma, who’s broken an arm during an act, for example)? She wants to tell Thamiel she will betray TCK/Robin in exchange for a nice villa in the nice parts of hell.

“Robin Allison Minstrell” contains an anagram for “Lola Ribers”, which is close enough to Rivers – b/v can be represented by the same latter in Hebrew. Can’t make much sense out of the remaining letters ( onisnmintll ), though… posting in hope someone else has a breakthrough 🙂

Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac, but the angel stayed his hand and instead he sacrificed the ram he found, caught in a thicket by its horns.

We don’t know what the thicket was, but if it were made of briars, the briars wrapped around the horns would be the thorny crown – and the ram substituted for the sacrifice instead of Isaac is used as typology of Christ, who was the atoning victim and who, during the Passion, was crowned with thorns by the mocking soldiers.

If this “Lola Rivers” is Robin, she may be attempting to make a deal with Thamiel/sacrifice herself (this takes place a month after the failed crusade against Hell) in order to get herself into Hell so that the Comet King can use her to get into Hell and overthrow it from the inside, or that she can bring a Name in with her, or something of that nature.

If “Lola” is Robin, that might account for why Dylan thinks she looks familiar, but something must have gone very wrong in a month to reduce her to this state (unless she’s been trying rituals herself or ways around the getting into Hell part, and these are the effects on her).

Yeah, Minstrell = Jester seems likely. Her name wouldn’t have to refer to the crown; her being the jester is enough, and makes sense with her taking on her husband’s quest, as “while the king was lookinh down, the jester stole his thorny crown.”

I assume the thorny crown is because Thaumiel is the shadow of keter, and also because the thorny crown was used to mock Jesus during his crucifixion (after which he died, descended to Hell, and opened the gates of Heaven to some).

If this is all a role in ritual magic and in TCK’s plans, then the jester is in a cast in that sense too.

And if the fall of a Robin affects TCK like Acher, that also might be a way into Hell.

*There were two people who only gave a street address, and who also either had no paypal addresses or had one that didn’t match the given address. I haven’t sent these out yet – if you think this might be you, please email me (I don’t want to put identifying personal information on here).
there was also someone who wrote “medium” on the size, but didn’t specify which shirt he wanted. The only medium I have left is the unsong logo (big aleph) shirt, I can send you that one if that’s ok.
People who still want shirts:

I have two large shirts of each type that are currently unspoken for, as well as an XL theodicy shirt. email me if you’re interested.
The images used for the shirt designs, as well as links to the customink designs, are available here, if you want to order on your own: https://goo.gl/photos/iBtab1Lq6Lvs4fpf9
Thanks for participating, everyone! it’s been great.

1. In a previous chapter, it was mentioned that you have to spend 8 years as an apprentice magician.

2. Since Mark is an archmage in 2001, I assume that at that point he had already completed these 8 years, plus some extra.

3. I assume that means Mark is at least a few years out of college, even if he started his apprenticeship in his teens.

4. In addition, Mark has multiple children in 2001. Not impossible, but unlikely then that he is in college in 1999.

5. It is possible that Mark and Dylan are several years apart in college and it’s possible that Dylan went to college at a very young age, but even so, it seems unlikely that they would have any overlap if Dylan is 20 in 1999.

Perhaps but with the narration of how tight all the evidence was actually favors a quick trial which would let Mark a somewhat plausible amount of time to become Archmage of the West after graduating.
The other option would be that Dylan is lying about his age while appearing unusually young.

this, Also in chapter 46 Dylan says Mark has been in Sing Sing for 10 years, so chapter 8 should probably to be changed to happen in 2007 which would still be a pretty rapid career climb and would have happened after the Bush assassination

I haven’t seen an explication of the name “Lola Rivers” yet. I don’t have a good theory, but a couple observations:

Lola could mean “whatever Lola wants, Lola gets”, which would be a straightforward reference to the chutzpah required to summon Thamiel. It could also be a reference to the Kinks song, which would imply she’s a transvestite, undermining the theory about her being Robin (a theory which I like…)

I feel like there was a discussion of the Kabbalistic significance of rivers, at some point, but I can’t find it…

Her last name is a reference to River Song: the time traveler from Dr. Who, whose story interacts with his in a bizarre and complicated manner.

Her last name, Lola, is a reference to the main character of “Run Lola Run.” In said movie she has twenty minutes to find 100,000 Deutsche Marks (#BeforeTheEuro); when she inevitably fails, time seems to rewind to twenty minutes earlier, and she gets another chance. She fails, time seems to rewind, and this process repeats until she succeeds through staggering luck.

Let’s say we accept that analysis… Then we’ve concatenated Lola (no last name), with River Song, to form “Lola River Song”. But there’s no Song, so it’s un-song, therefore Malia Ngo can manipulate time. I think.

Possibly also a reference to River Tam, an ill, eerily-thin girl with a mysterious request (“Miranda*”) which ended up leading the requestee into a hell-world and invoking the devil (in the form of the reavers).

*Miranda is a clear reference to the last chapter, since the famous person named Miranda is known for his successful broadway show.

From wikipedia: Lola is a female given name, and means Lady of Sorrows.

“Our lady of sorrows” is one of the representations of the Virgin Mary in Catholicism.

Lola Rivers also gives us “River of Sorrows” which is the Chinese nickname for the Yellow River named so after the color given to it by the sediments – the Colorado river was named by the spanish in a similar fashion.
The Yellow River is also known as “Scourge of the Sons of Han” Han being the Han Chinese.
Yellow in Mandarin is Huang whose Cantonese equivalent is Ng and the Vietnamese/Hakka equivalent is Ngô 吳, note the appearance of the large seal script variant.

Lola Rivers also gives us “River of Sorrows” which is the Chinese nickname for the Yellow River named so after the color given to it by the sediments – the Colorado river was named by the spanish in a similar fashion.

Interesting. Taking a Greek approach, it could also be the Acheron or mythological Cocytus.

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

If Rose is Robin, the obvious “worm” is Jalaketu (flies as a thunderbolt, his love (though not quite a secret) destroyed her life). Uriel (storm) and Thamiel (worm) also kind-of fit, but not as much–neither love her, I don’t think either are capable of it. Though “his dark secret love” could be Thamiel’s sadism, I guess.)

Aaron glosses the “jester with his arm in a cast” part of American Pie as referring to Jesus/divine mercy being held back when divine judgment (the Flood) holds sway. We’ve heard several times (including in-chapter) that Thamiel might be a facet of God, Lola/Jester is someone overcoming pain to oppose him and establish divine mercy.

Esp. with Minstrell = Jester, I think most of the probability goes to Robin = TOK continuing Jala’s work. TINAC BNIEAC and all that, and this is elegant where Malia Ngo wouldn’t be without some serious backstory coincidences. That we still haven’t heard about.

One theory I haven’t seen come up yet – Dylan is the one conjuring Thaumiel through this ritual, whether or not he’s actually present when Robin summons him. Rather than being a fake, I wonder if he hasn’t been “infected”/AI boxed.

I don’t see why designing a ritual would count the same as actually performing it, especially since it’s a placebomantic ritual and that means that Dylan’s role is basically stringing together impressive-sounding gibberish.

And I don’t see what motive Dylan would have to summon Thamiel or convince someone else to summon him. He’s pretty upfront about it being a bad idea, and he’s not the one who broaches the topic of summoning demons. He just doesn’t care enough to stop someone else’s bad idea.

Normally designing a ritual would not count. But there is a crack in everything, and this is Thamiel. If it were me, I wouldn’t help because I’d be too worried that showing someone how to properly draw the summoning circle would count as actually drawing it. That, and summoning Thamiel seems like a fundamentally ill advised action.

Though, if I knew more about what the rules were and why Lola wanted to summon Thamiel, maybe I could be convinced.

“Malia” means “bad”, but is also a Hawaiian variant of the name “Mary” (note that this chapter is set in Magdalena – in the madonna/whore duality, Magdalene is the bad Mary – but note as well that both Virgin and Magdalene are good figures), “Ngo” is either non-government organization or a Vietnamese pop album by artist Quang Ha – in Vietnamese, “Ngo” means “look”. We might thus take her name to mean “Behold the evil one!”, or perhaps “A whore for an NGO.”

Malia Ngo is an anagram of “Magnolia”, which ultimately derives from “magnus”, meaning “great”. It gets there via Pierra Magnol, the French botanist most famous for setting the categorization of plants still in use today. In 1720, he published in one paper a pair of treatises that each focused on two divisions of plants, a duality that echoes God’s two major plants in the Garden; life and knowledge. The magnolia plant symbolizes feminine beauty and is believed to be medicinal in Asian cultures (which, per Ngo, are assuredly relevant). Note that “shrub” is one of the categories Magnol used – and that the rose plant is also a shrub. “Oh rose, you are sick”? Or perhaps “Oh magnolia, you are sick”?

Factor in the name “Lola Rivers” as well – Lola is short for “Dolores”, meaning sad, and “Rivers” is kabbalistically equivalent to “Reverse” (see chapter 3, among others) – thus we may understand her fake name to be “Reverse sadness”, but nominative determinism suggests this to be a poor name to choose indeed – if Malia is Lola is Robin, then we may understand this pseudonym to be a foretelling: Robin is attempting to reverse the course of heaven and earth – and her own husband – to end suffering and the sorrow it brings, but in doing so has reversed her own moral arc and is set on a path of despair. However, this reversal may allow Malia Ngo’s name to be inverted as well, which would produce something like “do not see goodness”, a useful warning when none may look on the face of God and live.

We only have the question of Dylan. If he enabled this horrific set of events, then the fact that he’s aiming to take down Malia now may be why the universe is letting him count as a good guy: his moral arc is towards mitigating the damage of his greatest mistake. However, it may also be setting him up as a fall guy (which is appropriate – note his similarity to Herod and other villains in killing all of his enemies except one, and the hubris in then taking this person into his own ranks) and the slaying of Malia Ngo may be a terrible mistake, an evil only allowed to happen because Dylan refuses to doubt himself.

Thus, we can conclude that Malia Ngo summoned Thamiel, became tainted and radiates evil, but is nonetheless a force for goodness and her impending assassination may be part of the cause of the apocalypse, or we can conclude that Malia Ngo summoned Thamiel, became “sick” and surrendered to evil, and that her impending assassination is one of the ways that justice will be done through the end of the world.

Summoning demons doesn’t really seem like the sort of thing ritual magic should be able to do. Isn’t it only supposed to make natural things happen in a more providential way, not do actual undeniably supernatural things?

– The “aspects” use plausibly-deniable means to communicate, like Ouija boards or paraedoilia. That’s why they can’t harm anything but the summoner – they’re not physically present.

– We’ve seen ritual magic used as an attempt to block both Sohu’s kabbalistic powers and Malia Ngo’s aura, back during the rehearsal. (Because magic is inhernetly unreliable? Because it doesn’t obey the laws of physics?) Perhaps only the binding is placebomantic, and the summoning bit is obscenely easy – saying his name three times or something.

– Demons are theoretically capable of manifesting anywhere at will, it’s just unusual for them to decide to. This could be what Dylan meant by “They’ll play by the rules, but a summoning changes those rules a little.” It also fits with Thamiel seemingly being able to visit peace summits, fidling contests and Uriel seemingly at will.

I work in an NGO and we never refer to the UN or UN agencies as NGOs; they’re called “international organisations,” “intergovernmental organisations,” or “treaty organisations,” because their constituent members are governments even though they themselves are not. Some people may use the acronym “IGO” (as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_organization#United_Nations).

Off-topic for this chapter: hooray, HTTPS finally works on unsongbook.com. Except for the fact that the page background and the logo are referenced via plain HTTP URIs. (And why hotlink the logo from imgur instead of hosting it locally?)

The bad news is that there’s a crack in everything. … If you’re escalating all the way up to Thamiel himself, there will be holes in you big enough to let him in, and from there he’ll do what he wants
Damn… I did expect that prediction to be true, but I didn’t expect it to be THAT literal.